Nanny Barrow Gets a Kiss
by tito72
Summary: When he gets back to the butler's pantry, Mrs. Hughes breaks off from her serious conversation with Mr. Carson to wave Thomas in. "Nanny Moore has taken ill, as well," she says, looking frazzled. Follows (The Very Modern) Mr. Barrow Gives Up Smoking


"You've a letter," Mr. Carson says before breakfast and Thomas recognizes the handwriting as Agatha's before he's even got it in his hand.

"Thanks," he says vaguely and opens it. It's a longish sort of letter, he discovers, and he hasn't time to read it all now, but he does give it a skim between spoonsful of porridge. "The boy's taken ill," he says quietly to Jimmy, who's watching him. Things have been slightly strained between them since the day Thomas lost his glove, but it's not gotten so bad they can't talk to one another. Thomas thinks to himself sometimes that night must have been a fluke, that Jimmy had been so horrified and fascinated by the ugly scar that he'd plain forgotten who he was with. Strange as that sounds, it gets him through the day; he'll not get his hopes up again, not this time.

"Not serious?" Jimmy asks and Thomas shakes his head.

"Nah. She's having the doctor out, but she's sure it's fine." Thomas certainly hopes it's fine, anyway. Agatha writes as though she's not too worried and she'd know, wouldn't she? It's just nonsense, then, that Thomas's heart is pounding a bit too hard and he's got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He's just overreacting, he knows that. "It is fine," he repeats, more to himself than to Jimmy.

When he looks up from the letter, after reading a bit about the cat Agatha's brought in to chase out the mice, Mrs. Hughes is standing over Anna, looking quite concerned. "You're as pale as a ghost!" she says, reaching out to touch her face. "And burning up."

"I'm fine," Anna says, but her voice has gone hoarse.

"Nonsense," Mrs. Hughes chides. "It's off to bed with you. We'll manage. I'm sure Miss Baxter wouldn't mind seeing to Lady Mary for one day."

"Of course I wouldn't," Baxter says at once, and Thomas and Jimmy exchange an eye-roll at her earnest kindness.

"There you are, then," Mrs. Hughes concludes kindly. "Now then, off to bed you go."

She's no sooner shooed Anna out the door, however, than one of the housemaids, the red-haired girl Thomas still hasn't learned the name of, accidently drops her knife onto her plate. "Mrs. Hughes," she says once the ringing has died down, "I don't feel so well, either."

She does look rather sickly, Thomas will admit, her face pale and pinched. Mrs. Hughes must agree with this silent assessment, because she sends the girl back upstairs to sleep it off. Mr. Carson just harrumphs and says sternly, "Would anyone else care to sleep the day away?"

"Wouldn't mind it," Jimmy says under his breath and Thomas grins at him.

By mid-morning, two more have been struck down by the illness: the chauffer and Lady Mary, both of whom are sweating it out in their respective beds. Carson sends Thomas to ring Doctor Clarkson, which Thomas dutifully does, all the while contemplating the unfairness of it, that it took Lady Mary getting sick for Carson to recognize that a doctor might be needed. If it was Thomas upstairs sweating, Carson probably would have given him a lecture on fortitude and how his being ill reflected poorly on the house.

When he gets back to the butler's pantry, Mrs. Hughes breaks off from her serious conversation with Mr. Carson to wave Thomas in. "Nanny Moore has taken ill, as well," she says, looking frazzled.

Thomas nods, understanding the difficulty. The rest of the sick they can cover for, but they don't just keep spare nannies in the closet with the linen, and with so many of the women down, they can't spare another housemaid to mind the children. The only thing for it is for Mrs. Hughes herself to do it and she's far too run off her feet already for such an involved task.

"I'll mind them," Thomas says before he really even knows what he's doing. He doesn't mean to say it, and he's sure the widening of his eyes in shock is right comical, but he's not about to take it back, especially not with Carson's reaction of horror.

"You?" Carson croaks incredulously.

"Yes," Thomas says, straightening himself up to his full height. He'll not back down now, not after that insult. "Me. I happen to have significant experience in child care, Mr. Carson." And I'm blood, he doesn't say.

Carson still looks rather forbidding, but Mrs. Hughes's expression has turned thoughtful. "Do you, indeed?" she asks and turns back to Carson. "Well, Mr. Carson, I don't see any reason why he shouldn't."

"I can think of several," Mr. Carson says gruffly, but at the look Mrs. Hughes gives him, he concedes. "Very well, Thomas. But Mrs. Hughes will be checking in, and I expect not a hair on their heads to be out of place."

"Of course, Mr. Carson," Thomas says, determined that each child will have a single hair out of place by the end of the day, just for spite.

Thomas relieves the housemaid Sally from her position in the nursery with a curt, "I'm taking over now," giving her no room to argue.

"Oh, thank goodness you're here, Mr. Barrow!" she chitters at him. "I've no call at all watching little ones, honestly! I wouldn't know a nappy from a pacifier." From the awkward little pat she gives George before she ducks out the door, Thomas is inclined to believe her.

"Now, then," he says when she's gone, turning to face his charges, who're sprawled on a blanket near the window. It's finally gotten to the point that his throat stops closing up when he looks at Sybbie, even if she does look more like her mum every day. "What shall I do with the two of you?"

He'd maybe been exaggerating a tad when he'd told Carson he had significant experience. He's got a bit, had held and played with and fed Tommy when he'd still been toddling. The boy's mum had always been there, though, watching over Thomas's shoulder and if he couldn't get the lad to stop crying or anything like that, she'd swooped him away and taken care of it. Today Thomas is on his own and that's a definite first for him. Still, nothing he can't handle.

By the time Mrs. Hughes checks in on him, Thomas has been forced to reevaluate this opinion. The thing about children, even well-bred and highly-loved ones, is that they're still children and therefore quite shrill when they want to be. And little George seems to want to be very often. He screams when he wants held, he screams when Thomas picks him up, he screams when Thomas sets him back down again. Thomas would think he's doing something very, very wrong, but Sybbie is so blasé about the whole dreadful affair that Thomas is forced to conclude this a regular occurrence. Never before has Thomas empathized so completely with poor Nanny Moore.

At least Sybbie's an angel. Apart from the (admittedly shrill) squeal of his name, as close as she could pronounce it ("Bawoh," she says, and it melts the ice around his heart, it truly does), she mostly just sits and plays with her dollies. On the rare occasion she gets tired of those, she can usually be persuaded to play with her set of fivestones for a few minutes. She's not a very good player, Thomas can see that, but it keeps her occupied until she gets bored again and goes back to her dolly.

"Well," Mrs. Hughes says, upon seeing Thomas rocking George back and forth in a futile sort of motion, while Sybbie tells him earnestly about the dinner party her dolls are going to host over the noise of her cousin's screaming, "You're doing better than I expected, I'll admit."

"Apologies, Mrs. Hughes," Thomas says, holding George out at arms' length. "I've gone rather deaf, I'm afraid."

"Indeed," Mrs. Hughes returns, smiling in a way Thomas might call fond if he didn't know better. "I feared that would be the case, although you seem to be doing well. Are they giving you very much trouble?"

"Nothing I can't handle," Thomas says firmly. He's not going to be taken away from these kids that soon, not even if they are giving him rather more than a little trouble.

Except, Mrs. Hughes gets a strange sort of look about her face and says, "No, I suppose it's not. I'll send Sally up with their lunch tray, shall I?"

She doesn't know, Thomas thinks, she can't know what Thomas is to these children, because it's never come up before, and surely it would have, something that pressing and inappropriate. Still, she obviously knows Thomas has deep sort of feelings about the darlings, because she says no more about the excess noise and leaves him to it.

Lunch is an unmitigated disaster. What Thomas hadn't realized about children is that though their teeth are small, they're quite sharp and quite able to pierce Thomas's skin. And George Crawley, he's a biter.

"Oh no!" Sybbie says after the third time Thomas has been bitten in the course of feeding the boy. "You is bweeding!"

"What's that?" Thomas asks absently, dodging yet another attempt to maul him. "Here now," he says rather sharply to George. "That's enough of that! You'll eat your lunch or you'll eat nothing, but you can't eat me, either way."

"You is bweeding!" Sybbie says again and Thomas looks at her sharply.

"You're bleeding?" he asks, checking her over in a fit of panic. He doesn't know what Carson will do to him if he actually let one of the little ones come to harm, but he imagines it will be dire and immediate. "Where?"

"Not me," Sybbie huffs, very put-out. "You awe." She points with her little fork to a spot on Thomas's hand that, now that he thinks of it, is rather painful. Sure enough, when he looks down, there's a slow trickle of red making its way down his wrist and onto the floor.

"Good God," he says faintly, and grabs for his handkerchief.

By nap time, Thomas is coming out of his bloody skin. He takes the kids for a walk after lunch to calm them down and it seems to work; George is out like a light in his pram and Sybbie's toddling has gotten slow and faltering by the time they come back to the house. Easy as pie, he thinks, except that when he gets up to their nursery, things start to break down again. George has a tantrum as soon as Thomas sets him in his cot, screaming and flailing about and generally making a nuisance of himself, leaving Thomas with no choice but to pick him up and rock him about. Thomas is used to that, though, and what really gets him is the way Sybbie does the same. He no sooner gets the girl down than she pops back up and starts to cry.

"There now," he says, touching her soft little cheek with one of his fingers, wiping away her tears. "It's alright. You're just tired, is all. Once you have a bit of a nap, you'll be right as rain again, mark my words."

Sybbie doesn't mark his words, though, just stares up at him with huge, wet eyes and hiccups despairingly. It's heartbreaking to see, because unlike George, Sybbie hasn't cried yet today. Crying is what children do best, Thomas knows, but she looks so damned sad that he can feel himself start to choke up a bit.

"Don't cry, sweetheart," he tells her softly. "It'll be alright. Nothing's going to hurt you, now, I promise."

"Bawoh," she says sadly, putting her arms out in what Thomas has come to realize is the universal motion for 'up.' He shouldn't pick her up, he knows that, he should insist she lie down and go to sleep, but right then she's looking at him like he's her entire world, and she's got Sybil's eyes. There's no choice, he thinks, and picks her up, as well.

After nap time is tea and after tea, Thomas takes the children to the Green Room for their daily hour with their parents. Lady Mary's ill, of course, but his lordship, her ladyship, Lady Rose, and Branson are all there. The men are discussing estate business and the women hats, but they all pause as he comes in to stare at him in shock, which Thomas takes to mean none of them had been notified of the staff change.

"Thomas?" Branson asks, looking bewildered, and Thomas grits his teeth, because it's Barrow, isn't it, even if he is playing nursemaid for the day. It should be Nanny Barrow, at the very least, as ridiculous as that sounds.

"The children, sir," Thomas says with a tight grin. To Sybbie, he says quietly, "Go to Daddy now, girl," and gives her a nudge forward. She gives him a bright smile, then runs over into Branson's waiting arms.

"I'll take him," her ladyship says, smiling kindly at Thomas, the way she always does and the way his lordship would never dare. His lordship never even looks over, even as Thomas puts George into her ladyship's open arms, but nothing new there: his lordship is constantly and aggressively unconcerned with Thomas. Thomas doesn't wait for acknowledgement from the man, because he'd be waiting forever if he did. Instead, he ducks quietly out of the room and goes to smoke at least three cigarettes end-to-end.

When Thomas collects the children again, he takes them back up to their play room, determined to have no more nonsense. He puts George on a blanket by the window, sets a spinning top in front of him, and glares him into submission. He makes the top go round a few times in example, hoping the lad will catch on, but he only gets moody stares and unintelligible babble in return. The spinning does make George take an interest in the toy, however; he picks it up after the third time it's toppled over, brings it to his mouth and proceeds to drool all over it. But at least he's not screaming, so Thomas leaves him to it.

Sybbie, in the meanwhile, goes back to her dolly. Thomas watches her as she plays, and he does a bit of tidying, too, because children are rather messy things, as it happens. When he's gotten the room back into some semblance of order, he leans against the wall and watches the children. They're not so bad, he supposes, and really sort of charming when they're not being overloud.

Then George takes the top out of his mouth and lobs it at Sybbie's head, where it connects with a thump. All three of them stare in shocked silence for a beat, then Sybbie throws back her head and begins to wail. George, apparently sensing that he's going to be in for it now, does the same. And in that moment, Thomas sort of wishes he could join them.

Later, much later, after the children have eaten supper and been put down for bed, Thomas stands in the middle of the room, exhausted. They'd taken ages to get to sleep, and Thomas is afraid to even breathe near George, for fear the boy might wake and want to start the whole ordeal over again. Instead, Thomas wanders over to Sybbie's cot and peers down at her, grudgingly enchanted. She is rather darling, is the thing, with her little curls and her tiny face.

"You look like your mother," he tells her softly. "You get that a lot, I expect, but it's true. And it's a compliment, believe me, girl. Your mother was the best woman I ever knew." He pauses and swallows roughly. "S'not easy, being what we are, you've gotta know that by now, young as you are. But your mother loved you, I know she did, even if she didn't know you. I know it, see, coz she loved me, and what I am is worse than anything you'll ever be, cross-breeds the both of us or no."

He falls silent, just watching the little girl sleep. Or not sleep, apparently, because it's not long before her little blue eyes open and she stares up at him.

"Bawoh," she says sleepily. She brings her little pudgy hand up to her mouth and blows him a kiss. Thomas catches it in his hand, the ruined one, and holds it to his chest until Sybbie rolls over onto her stomach and closes her eyes again. Thomas watches her breathe, checking silently on George now and again, until Sally comes to relieve him for the night.

There are no cards that night at all. Thomas would chalk it up to the way Jimmy's been avoiding intimate moments with him for days, but it can't be, since he comes to sit next to Thomas when Thomas slumps into his rocking chair. And anyway, the oppressive silence of the evening tells another story entirely. They're exhausted, the lot of them.

One thing that can be said of the day is that Thomas has a new appreciation for the position of nanny. He'll not apologize for the incident with Nanny West, as that witch had it coming to her, but Thomas certainly wouldn't want the job of looking after the children full time, either. He'll have to do it all again tomorrow, unless Nanny Moore is quicker than expected to recover, but for now he only closes his eyes and relaxes.

"Mr. Barrow?" Jimmy asks, and Thomas opens one eye to look at him. "You alright?"

"Fine," Thomas tells him, touched at the concern. "Just about done in, though. Think I'm headed up, in a minute."

"Right," Jimmy says, and then falls back to silence.

A few minutes later, when Thomas finally manages to lever himself out of the chair and onto his feet, Jimmy stands, as well. "I'll come, too, shall I?"

"If ya like," Thomas concedes. They climb the stairs together to the men's hall in tired silence. When they get to Thomas's door, though, Jimmy pauses and turns to face him.

"Mr. Barrow," he says, then stops, swallowing rather hard.

Thomas watches his throat work and tries not to think about what it might be like to lick just there. "Yes?" he asks, admittedly rather breathlessly.

"I want- That is, could I…" he trails off, looking down at his feet suddenly, as though he's lost his nerve over something.

"What is it?" Thomas asks, concerned. "Are you alright, Jimmy?"

"Yes," Jimmy says, looking back up at him. He licks his lips nervously and takes a step back. "Yes, I'm fine. Good night, Mr. Barrow."

And with that, he turns and walks away, down the hall and to his own room, which he enters without a second glance back. Thomas watches him go, feeling as though he's missing something very important. He watches the door for a moment longer before he hears footfalls on the stairs, then turns away before he can be caught.


End file.
